Acer V7500 – Picture Quality

There’s more to like about the V7500’s pictures than I’d expected given Acer’s relative lack of pedigree as a home-cinema projector brand and the affordable price of the unit.

Fine detail reproduction from our favourite collection of Blu-rays was nothing short of outstanding, for instance. Pictures look emphatically HD, without the slightest trace of either visible pixel structure or exaggerated grain, even when the image is pushed as large as 150-inches across. This adds up to an image that immediately looks natural and immersive.

It isn’t only the V7500’s ability to render pixels cleanly and evenly that contributes to the level of detail in its pictures, either. It’s also surprisingly adept at colour reproduction, delivering even the subtlest colour blends with a delicacy that’s far beyond its price point. This is especially – although certainly not exclusively – apparent with skin tones, which look consistently believable as well as free of the blocking, striping and “fizzing” that can appear with some other budget DLP projectors.

Contributing further to the picture’s sharpness is the V7500’s handling of motion. This is displayed without the excessive judder or fizzing noise that single-chip DLP used to be prone to during camera pans – although in truth, few modern DLP projectors still suffer with this issue.

Impressively, the superb detail delivered by the V7500 even continues into dark scenes. With fairly minimal adjustment it proves capable of producing surprising amounts of shadow detail. This stops dark content from looking hollow and flat, contributing to a more consistent viewing experience as a film shifts between dark and light sequences.

The V7500 delivers deeper blacks during dark scenes too, even though it remains passably bright when running in its Eco lamp mode. This creates a sense of dynamism that further contributes to what really can be a startlingly cinematic image.

Inevitably for a £630 projector, however, the V7500’s pictures aren’t perfect. The biggest problem is that while dark scenes have their strengths, they’re also afflicted by a gentle green undertone that no amount of playing with the projector’s colour settings can fully resolve.

Your brain somewhat tunes this issue out over time, but it certainly reduces the naturalism of some colour tones during dark scenes – especially skin tones and yellows and gold highlights/explosions.

It’s also possible to detect traces of the rainbow effect during dark scenes, despite Acer’s attempts to counter it. To be fair, this doesn’t crop up as often as is seen on many other similarly affordable single-chip DLP projectors, but you’ll notice it from time to time – even if you’re not somebody who’s especially sensitive to it.

Finally, there’s a slight bit of clipping (flaring out) in particularly bright areas, and it’s sometimes possible in mid-bright parts of an image to see more noise than you ideally would. This tends to appear only over background areas, however, and so seldom classes as a major distraction.